Natura Naturans, 6

“Is there anyone alive? If anyone is out their, you are not alone. My name is Clarissa Clarke, I am the first engineer at Knotsworth Power Station. All of my colleagues are dead. I have been trapped here for about three weeks. I can be contacted by short wave radio on fifteen thousand kilohertz. I can’t maintain the station on my own. If anyone is there please call me on fifteen thousand kilohertz. I am broadcasting on all possible frequencies, but you need to call me on fifteen thousand….”

The broadcast ended suddenly and then the power went off again.

I’d managed to boil six litres of water which would easily last me a few days on my current regime of 250ml every 6 hours. Only a severe thirst would see me break my routine and only then against my better judgement.

So I wasn’t alone.

The sun set and I went into my bedroom and for the first time in weeks I opened the curtains. I’d made myself a cup-a-soup and I sat on the edge of my bed and stared out into the blackness of the sky. I couldn’t get Old Marg’s demise out of my head. As I sat sipping the stolen soup from her home I still wondered what I had witnessed and if she was dead when I broke into her home.

I hope she was. I couldn’t help but wonder what she had made of the situation that she was in hours before her demise, to know she wasn’t away on holiday at all but sat trapped in the walls of the house next door, alone, old, suffering as I was but with infirmity and age, it didn’t bare thinking about but I couldn’t refuse the thoughts myself. I could’ve done something, I could’ve helped her. She might be alive now, if only I had known of her plight. And now I sat enjoying an apocalyptic pleasure of her stolen soup and water.

I needed to leave.

Sitting here was going to see me die too, of loneliness, hunger, thirst or zombie dog. I’d be better off running. Where, I had no idea. But the chance of a safe house somewhere close, or a freedom from the sphere of madness was worth taking.

Death on the move seemed better than death hiding with nothing.

The house needed hoovering and the trash was mounting up.

I had to make a decision. Knotsworth power station was about three miles away.